I stepped into The Common Cup Coffee shop, and discovered the artist, Tess Smith. She has these beautiful watercolor paintings that blur the lines of animals in action and the splattered colors of the camouflaged spaces they embody. She is interested in a split second when they are in motion, landing, shifting and blurring our vision with their presence. The one I can't stop staring at is and old soul kine of octopus who is letting off ink. I imagine the huge circular quiet face disappearing in purple brown liquid, hiding from whatever is near.
There is an article my therapist referenced recently about when a person gets stressed, something in their brain changes, making the person want to avoid all adventure, to make the person want to go into hiding. I have felt like that this week, avoiding my closest friends, continuing to function robotically, while also wanting to shut down. When I asked my partner for advice, he suggested I stop doing certain things, to which I responded, that if I did say no, it wouldn't help because the actual requirements of my day could not change. So do I want to stay this way? To be safe and stuck and justifiable to my own disappointing plight?
Part of my struggle is that when around other people, I make them central, I make their subjective reality greater then my own (in essence I blow them up and shrink myself down). I hate even writing this because I fear that the people I long to connect with most will think they should not engage with me, because they want to protect me from what I do when around anyone. I want to read and do what would make YOU feel good or affirmed, but I give up a lot in squelching my own subjective reality. It is very emptying. Thus when my closest friends call, I don't know who I am in order to pick-up and say hello. When people with great needs pounce or even strangers show up, I instead offer them everything I can, because it feels safer to make them so big, I don't have to deal with what I am doing.
I recently read Andre Acimen's A Conversation with my Deaf Mother in the New Yorker, and am struck by how his mother's training in pretending she could hear stunted her learning on complex processing of data. The woman had difficulty connecting dots and seeing how something might evolve. I find the idea fascinating as I consider my own hangups. Yesterday my heather would not turn on. I could have looked at the furnace, youtubed possible problems and fix, but I didn't, I couldn't believe I would know how to process it. Instead I called someone else who I believe has a brain that can understand Furnaces. I also have difficulty deciding to commit to new plays in Bridge, to bidding on points and feeling more comfortable with the chances of winning big over the security of staying safe. But safety doesn't satisfy me when I reflect back on it.
Last night I finished Christopher Beha's novel, What Happened to Sophie Wilder. In it, he considers Sophie Wilder's life's end and consciously chooses not to decide it, because he can't. As an artist, I believe he knows that life and death are viable options on any given day. Based on who [i.e. the reader] is in each characters head, a decision has to be made [i.e. the reader has to make it]. As I am writing this, I suddenly know what happened (or is happening) and now that I think about it, I suppose everyone who reads it does too. It stems from one's own sense of God, either as a destroyer or a lover. Because of sin and how I can't possibly save myself, I can choose to force my own end, or to look for a bigger source for help! That's it!
While Sophie does not know if she can be forgiven for a classified unforgivable sin, I do know. The author brings up Judas Iscariot and how Judas had no choice in betraying Christ and is condemned, but even in that, I choose to believe he is able to repent and be forgiven (except that none of that is up to me, thank goodness). The sense that it is better that he never be born, may be in the moments he has to deal with himself, which for each of us (Christ himself on the cross and separated from God), the notion of our own shit seems too great to the point we can't bear it. I guess the question is did Judas in life or after, decide to trust in Christ? The reality Christopher writes is that we could not exist without God is in this world (in our lives). We have souls outside of our shell-like bodies.
I would encourage you to read it while even now wondering if I am capable of understanding what living in Christ's death for me and choosing life in him on earth and after looks like! I suppose for me, it means continuing to seek out his face, his image in things and people and history, with some serious petitions of God to support me in seeing who he is and believing I am capable of learning somethings new!
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